Peter Godfrey-Smith studies octopuses to learn about the nature of mind.

Scientists have known for decades that octopuses and their relatives can solve puzzles and navigate mazes, have camera-like eyes just as humans do, and seem more like vertebrates than the snails and jellyfish to which they are much more closely related. YouTube videos show them unscrewing the lids of jars to clamber out of confinement, or confounding their keepers by circumventing the experiments in which they are placed. They are capable of learning which food types are easier to acquire and remembering their discoveries for weeks at a time. They play. The famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau mused on the octopus’s “soft intelligence.” But unlike other animals that we see as intelligent, such as great apes, or crows and their kin, octopuses seem unsettlingly alien.

Octopuses only live a short time. Even the giant Pacific octopus maxes out at four years.

And here’s how octopuses Do It:

Octopuses and their squid relatives lack genitalia as we think of them, but the males have a specialized arm that they fill with sperm and transfer to the female.

A “specialized arm.” LAYDEEZ!

Also: “In the blanket octopus, females can grow to be two meters long, but the males are only just over two centimeters…. ” So yeah I’m betting the female octopus is the one who moves the heavy furniture when they decide to change up a room.